Cafe Ardour

“Mujhe Bhi BOX Jana Hai..!! “urged Sid’s mom excitedly whilst going through the pictures of me & Sid’s visit to one of the best coffee house in world, “The Starbucks Café”. The number of pics she saw included the debutant visit & our ‘addicitional’ visit too, hoping from Fort Centre to Taj Mahal Palace ones. The excitement & childish curiosity in her eyes was worth watching, a rare scene, first of its kind, atleast to me. She also dreamt about the classical, relaxing, rejuvenating, totally different aura to be felt upon & lived in & travel the precious moment of her life at the slowest pace possible.  “But how come this sudden change happened? How did you guys all of sudden visited one of the costliest & generally unaffordable café (A general misconceived notion).”

“It was a normal day” stated I, beginning to mention about our first of its kind visit to the very homely, pampering The Starbucks Café. “Sid had some professional work at Nariman Point. I too had some personal banking work at Nariman Point. That made us agree upon the same time & day to visit the long-travelled land, to Sid, who has to go through Hercules Task when called upon any person to visit Mumbai CSMTM. It was near lunch time when we were done with our work at Nariman Point. Having being through worst experience of stomach ache & Typhoid, me & Sid decided not to have anything at Nariman Point instead go to fort & have something out there. But soon were we approaching Fort, Sid was reminded me to call one of his professional friend, who’s a Director of a renowned Corporate House having its Registered office in Fort itself. The tickle was just to remind Sid about the visit, as the Director usually complains to him for not paying visit to him despite of Sid being in SOBO.”

“Once called, Visit was obviously mandatory” continued I explaining here the whole chain of event that led us to The Starbucks Café. “We visited that Corporate House, meeting people, from Director, to senior employees to Auditors Thanks to Sid, who made his personal relations strong enough for us to meet them on personal level. The talks were so engrossing & mesmerising that it made us forget our hunger. We specifically restricted ourselves to talk anything Professional pertaining to business of the company, but that didn’t held us from talking on personal level to varied range of topics from politics, to economics, to monetary turmoil, to geographical advantages, etc.”

“Many a times, it does happen that under our Professional Cloak we cover our personal identity, emotions, beliefs, feelings to be never seen by anyone. But there should be someone who would turn you on so that you feel lighter inside. It was a honour to be part of such a enlightening conversation. Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is to be remembered at this very point holding its ground valid, because as soon as we left the premises, we were kicked & stamped upon by our tummy for filling it up. So again, we were held by a Million Dollar question, “Where shall we eat?”

“Sid having experience of various Eating outlet & signboards, started naming one after another. After naming many, he said “Starbucks”. Sooner, he spelt the word out, I gave him a surprised look on his pointing his hand directing towards the next building from where we were standing. I said, “Starbucks ???”. He too reiterated the same. It was just a split of second, & we said it together “Lets Go…!!” I really wonder till date what hit us, or were we possessed by some evil spirit to decide upon to go to The Café. But sooner we said, we started moving. Our breaths were high of entering a café that we only dreamt of someday to enter & we were controlling it by breathing heavily. Its 3, 2, 1 & we were in. It was like entering in some anther Dimension.

We entered in with a boom, and I really don’t know what happened, because soon the glass door behind us went to its place, we were cooled & relaxed with a homely atmosphere. Both of us felt like we were at our respective homes. We never had such a homely experience since the inception our friendship on our visiting any restaurant, café, places etc. On making ourselves comfortable on the first level, we went to the counter to place our order.

But still it felt, something is missing. We shall change our places to the ground level somewhere. & then something weird happened. A seat for two got vacated on the street side near glass window. We didn’t realised the importance of the seat then, but once occupying it, it felt like heaven. What a comfort, what a ease of access to table, not actually a table but a table sized, cut out from the tree trunk.  With drinks on table, bag packs aside, laptop on table, we started to look for the beauty of the places & how it caught us at every inch of the place. A whole stack filled with cups, mugs, mixers, old metallic cases, pots, sacks etc. gave a traditional classic look transporting us to some café in Ghana. The right to the stack had a full-length image of open sack coffee with classic pillars acting as its frame, occupying 1/3 of the wall. The counters, whether it be the billing counter, serving counter or the pour over counter, was as creatively designed to give a look of a perfect South African coffee growing area. The chairs, tables, raised seating, couches & every furniture was just complementing each other. The dim lighting, light musical ambience was just soothing us to stay over there long. It nearly took us an Hour to bring back our senses from the extremely beautiful & eye catching interior.  We tried our very best to stop being carried away but just could not control it. The Mughal styled wall design, the long-drawn curtains, the goodies lying all around were just beyond words to define their beauty. One can go on & on praising the beauty of the café for every inch of it, but still would find something left over each time. We were in deep love of the imagination & creativity of the designer who would have imagined & designed it all. It was like we explored a place of never ending beauty inbuilt its structure. It’s a place where your thinking capacity automatically gets a boost. It’s a place where all your stress, tensions etc. gets vanished in just a sip. The staff, usually in other café’s one would wish to keep distance to, but over here, one like to keep hearing them. Their calls for the order being ready, changing tempos from the first word to last word, their assistance at billing desk, serving desk & finally the cleaning staff not forgetting the security staff is worth spending every bit to the time with them. The huge painting on the walls, the lights arrangements, the struggle of every visitor with laptop or low charged mobile phone for the charging point in the decent & polite manner is worth paying attention to. The importance of charging point was realised to us later on when people started looking for them & then coming nearby our table to check whether we were done as we had a charging slot close by. One of the guest even asked us to charge his mobile phone for a while until he smokes his cigarette outside. All these things were just adding on to the fun of ours.

But all the good thing has to end, as watch waits for none to stop ticking. It was like meeting someone whom you love & with a heavy heart say adieu to the person although we feel like controlling the time & let the moment pause forever. Someone has aptly said, the most beautiful memories of life to be cherished throughout, always happens unplanned & untimed. But since we were to again come back to reality, to our homes, we have to leave the place, against out wishes, with a heavy heart, dragging ourselves out of the place with the only promise that one of the lover says to another, “We shall meet soon My Only Love”.  We could feel the pain one would feel on distancing herself from her only true Love, the separation of Hands from elbows to forearms, to wrist, to palm, to fingers, to The Last Touch. With the last touch of fingertip, we found ourselves on the street outside, again coming back to the real world crossing over dimensions. We started to walk forward looking back at the gateway to our Loved Dimension, until it went out of sight, lost into the horizon.

We started the return journey, with the love, comfort, experience, memories of The Starbucks Café, Fort that kept us motivated, mesmerised, happy, energetic, charged for the whole rest of the day. It was something that we were looking for since years in our city & we were finally able to meet. At the bedtime, we both although at different places, were thinking of the only one thing, when shall we be able to visit again to the café? But the wait was not longer. Within two days, we were again back to the same place, not originally with the intention to be there but to accomplish some task in the nearby locality & now it’s like, “Town Aaye aur Starbucks nai Gaye to kya khak Town Aaye” (You come to CSMTM, & if You don’t pay a visit to Starbucks fort, then the whole visit of your to CSMTM is waste.)